Secretary - Corpus Christi Guild Lists: Aspect

Secretary - Corpus Christi Guild Lists: Aspect

Aspect.

This is the formal Register of the most important religious guild in York, kept up to date from year to year, either by the Clerk of the Guild, or by one of the chief City clerks hired in for the purpose. The hand is clear, though cursive and somewhat exuberant.

The page is frame-ruled in double columns. There is no ruling for individual lines of writing, which are fairly even but can rise and dip.

Letters are different sizes and do not keep particularly evenly between head- and base-lines:

Uprights are sometimes vertical and sometimes slanting, though it is difficult to project these properly because the strokes curve. :

The oblique downstrokes from left to right are as usual made with the width of the pen, and the right-to-left ones with the narrow edge, but the marked backwards curves on the finishing flourishes on letters like h or y, and the general tendency of the uprights to lean forward counterbalance these.

Though letters like o, a, and n come to a point at the top, the general effect is not as pointed as the previous hand, partly because it is not so regular, and partly because of the exuberant curves and loops.

The aspect ratio is much the same as that of the previous hand, though rather wider and more relaxed. It is difficult to be precise, however, as the hand is so cursive and irregular.


o is 1:1	e is 10:11	m is 2:3	n is 5:6

Ascenders vary between being rather taller than the body of the text on letters like f and l to slightly less tall in letters like s, h and the shorter d.
Descenders on e.g. s, f, p, y, and even n can be proportionately even longer.

However, these vary so much according to the spirit of the moment that it is not really productive to measure them all. Even a w or a v can loop its way into the upper regions:

As you can see from the examples above, this is properly 'joined-up' writing.

Oddly, however, the scribe picks up his pen where we would expect him to use some of the loops to link letters, especially involving those with l or lb. This is presumably to save lateral space.

It may seem pointless in this case to talk about ligatures, but double ss and s + t are joined together in the characteristic un-modern manner,
and double pp and double ff are linked by the same cross-stroke.

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	Uprights are sometimes vertical and sometimes slanting, though it is difficult to project these properly because the strokes curve. :
The oblique downstrokes from left to right are as usual made with the width of the pen, and the right-to-left ones with the narrow edge, but the marked backwards curves on the finishing flourishes on letters like h or y, and the general tendency of the uprights to lean forward counterbalance these.
	Though letters like o, a, and n come to a point at the top, the general effect is not as pointed as the previous hand, partly because it is not so regular, and partly because of the exuberant curves and loops.